Brand New Day
by Altum
Summary: After the events at Michtam, the Elsa flies in search of Earth, and an exhausted Junior sits with Shion in the diner, reflecting on everything he's lost and how to best use the time Chaos has given them.


**Disclaimer: I do not own Xenosaga**

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**Brand New Day**

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Junior yawned. He was physically and mentally exhausted, but he couldn't ever find the time to sleep. He was suffering for it, yet his mind continued to wander. It had been a lot to take in. A lot of people had died. A lot of people who had been his friends. A lot of people who had been his family. 

And now he was out here trying to find Lost Jerusalem. Trying to find Earth. Trying to find the beginning of all of this.

He propped his feet up on the table in front of him and let out another yawn, this one bigger and more aggravated than the last. _I definitely need to get on this whole "sleep" thing sometime soon,_ he thought to himself, half joking and half serious.

The Elsa Diner was pretty empty. It never was really thriving in there to begin with, now that he thought about it, but something was different. The Elsa just didn't have that same vibrancy that it had when Chaos had been there. Not that Chaos had been a necessarily cheerful guy, but his sacrifice had taken a toll on all of them.

He was thankful that the service droids were down near the hangar getting their night's worth of tuning. In the diner, it was just him and the humming of ship and the view of infinite, black space just beyond the window.

Him, by himself, in this one room, thinking about how he was alone. _Better than listening to Captain Matthews' snoring._

At least he'd like to think so.

He took out one of his two pistols that he still had holstered at his side. It was a bad habit. He liked knowing that he had protection if he needed it. He usually did. He began to twirl the gun around his finger – another bad habit that formed ever since Albedo had died the _first_ time – while moving his propped feet in rhythm with it.

The door at end of the room chirped in its electronic voice before opening, revealing Shion, who walked towards him slowly. "Care if I join you?" she asked, looking at the gun still spinning around his finger.

He stopped the gun, took his feet off the table, and set it down. "Yeah, sure."

"How are you feeling?" Shion sat down.

"About as good as I can be, I suppose."

"You look tired."

"I am, I think. My body's been acting weird. My mind's screaming for me to rest, but it just keeps running in circles."

"Yeah, I know. I feel the same." There was an awkward pause before she nodded at the gun on the table. "Is that the one Gaignun gave you?"

Junior smirked. "Yeah, it is. A makarov. Stainless-steel finish and all. It's a fuckin' antique, man." Shion gave a slight smile, and he wondered how many times he'd probably rambled about the gun before. "You've probably heard that plenty by now, though." They laughed.

"Don't lose it. It's a good memento."

"Yeah, you don't have to tell me." It still hadn't quite set in for Junior that he'd never see Gaignun again, or even Albedo. His two brothers, his two best friends – they were gone. He shook his head and tried to clear his mind before he leaned back, fishing for a new topic. "So, how's Allen doing?" He winked. "You guys looked awfully cozy the other night."

She shrugged. "He's okay, I think. Still a little roughed up. The nanomachines did their job back on the Dämmerung, but he still needs to rest. He'll be back to normal, soon."

"Man, I hope not. I like him more now that he finally grew some balls." Junior let out a hearty laugh. "He took a beating, though, that's for sure. Good thing you came to your senses, otherwise Kevin would've – oops." He didn't mean to bring up Kevin. She'd been through enough with all of that.

"No, it's okay. I think I understand all of that now. All of this gave me some closure, I think."

"So, are you and Allen, you know?"

"What?" She looked confused, but he knew she had to be playing dumb.

He smiled. "Are you guys, like, together or something now?"

"Oh, I don't know." She wiped a stray piece of hair back behind her ear. "As rude as it all sounds, I never really considered him romantically until now. He's nice, though. He always has been. I think I was so wrapped up in my past that I never saw what was in front of me. He's here, and I'm happy he's still with me after all of this, but I'm not really dwelling on it. Besides, there's more important stuff right now to think about, I think."

Junior sighed. "If you say so. I mean, we're on this mission, right? Doing this… well, whatever we're doing. Finding Lost Jerusalem without the UMN? Hell, no one even knew where to find this son of a bitch when we _had_ access to the UMN. We don't even know where we are now, or where we ended up after everything went down at Michtam." He paused and noticed Shion staring down at the table as if her hopes were trampled and laid out for display.

"Look, Shion, this isn't coming out right. I'm not saying that this is all hopeless and everything we sacrificed was in vain, but maybe this whole thing we're doing is meant to give us a little extra time, you know? Every day since we left the Dämmerung, all I've been able to think of are the things that won't help me right now, like whether or not I'll ever see Gaignun again; whether or not Albedo is going to wake up; whether or not the old man's taking good enough care of MOMO and Juli or not. I know it's got to be the same for you and everyone you've lost, whether it's Jin, KOS-MOS, Kevin, or whoever. Maybe we're supposed to come to terms with everything _now_ and find out where we stand _today_ so we'll be better prepared _tomorrow_. We don't know what lies at Lost Jerusalem, you know? We need to be ready for the future when we get there. We need to be ready for change.

"Time to fix ourselves and be happy. I'd like to think that's just another thing Chaos did for us, you know?"

After a few moments, Shion lifted her head up and looked at him. "You're right, Junior. Thanks."

Shion started to get up from the table, and he picked up his gun and started to twirl it again. "I usually am. Say hello to Allen for me and get some rest. Remember, tomorrow's a brand new day."

"Yeah, sure," she said. "You be sure to get some rest yourself." She left and the door chirped once again as it opened and closed. He laughed to himself.

_Me? Yeah, right._

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-

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So, I recently beat Episode III, and I have to say that the ending was bittersweet. It wrapped up all the mystery nicely but really left me sorta upset, what with everyone dropping like flies. Hell, I was even feeling bad for the enemies (who really weren't all that bad to begin with, I notice). Just a well-crafted series, all-in-all. 

However, one thing that irked me was that despite this being the end of the series, it was a horrendous cliffhanger. There was some great closure with the current story arc and an epic, climatic ending sequence, but then everyone just up and left on this journey to find Lost Jerusalem? Damn. I want to know how this turns out, you know? Hence I came up with this story. I figure its natural that with some downtime after everything that went on, people were going to be thinking back and reflecting on everything that's been going on. This story is, essentially, a small sort of continuation of my own interpretation of the story, which I've started publishing on this site as a novelization, the first work being _The Will to Power_, obviously.

Also, I hope you don't mind me capitalizing Chaos' name. I know it's always written in lower case on the subtitles in the game, but I really don't see a practical purpose for it in writing. And I do understand the contrast between "chaos" and "KOS-MOS" (aka "order), but I just think it's easier to write/read if it's capitalized.


End file.
